IT WAS a message delivered with the dead-eyed assurance of a hitman who has watched the pretenders to his crown come and go without making an impact.

For Michael Owen, his England return against Brazil tonight, 346 days after he was carried out of the World Cup on a stretcher in Cologne with his very future as a footballer uncertain, is nothing more than the natural order restoring itself.

In Owen's absence, Steve McClaren has used Peter Crouch, Jermain Defoe, Andy Johnson, Wayne Rooney and David Nugent up front, and found himself staring into the England abyss after just nine games in charge.

But as McClaren has come to realise, there is nobody who can replace the most lethal England marksman of the past decade, the man whose 36 strikes for his country have only been surpassed by Bobby Charlton, Gary Lineker and Jimmy Greaves.

And for the Newcastle striker, despite the fact that his only goal in the last 17 injury-scarred months came against Jamaica a year ago, there is no doubt what will happen over the next six days.

"No, I don't THINK I can do it against Brazil or Estonia," said Owen, who will partner Alan Smith at Wembley. "I KNOW I can.

"The hardest thing to do in football is to score goals. That is my responsibility with England.

"But I enjoy that responsibility, I have grown old in the national team with it and I would not have it any other way. When I have that responsibility and people expect me to score I feel I grow a couple of inches taller.

"The burden is the easiest thing for me to handle because mental strength is probably the biggest asset I have.

"The more the pressure in the game the better for me. I love the high stakes games."

Tonight's game will be more of a carnival than a death-or-glory shoot-out but memories of previous goalscoring successes against the South Americans are part of Owen's sense of certainty.

The World Cup represented the first of five tournaments in which Owen had failed to score. Past victims include Argentina, France, Germany and Portugal as well as Brazil.

"It is always important to have good first experiences in life," said Owen. "Every challenge you have to meet - whether your first youth game, your first reserve game, your debut or your first England game.

"If you go and do the business in those first games then that self-belief, that ability to trust in yourself, is something you never lose. "My game is maybe 80 percent self - belief - and if I am playing well then the other 20 per cent is confidence.

"A lot of other players maybe have 50 per cent self-belief and can play very averagely and then that confidence can sway from 50 per cent. I believe I have a big base of self-belief, bigger than most.

"Even if I am not playing great I still feel I can contribute, and if you give me a chance it does not matter if I have not had a kick because I still feel I have a chance of scoring.

"That's the same as if I was playing great."

Owen - and more crucially McClaren - are banking on those instinctive reactions taking care of any ring-rust for a player who has managed just three club games and last week's B international run-out against Albania.

Owen added: "There is no question of me rushing back. I am as strong as I have ever been. I feel good and I feel as fit as ever."